In the areas of water purification, waste reclamation, fruit drink preparations or other solid/liquid separation requirements, it is known that the problems encountered in these filtration processes will vary with the nature and size of the solids to be removed from the liquid phase. For example, it is known that conventional filtration units will clog as solids accumulate, and that these units must either be backwashed or removed from service in order to remove the solids.
Backwashing or removing the unit(s) from service requires an interruption or shut-down of the filtration process and therefore the amount of solids removed in a given time period is significantly reduced.
Therefore, in order to extend filter run times, the focus has been directed to determining the nature and size of the filter medium, in order to selectively remove a portion of the larger solid particles first and the smaller solid particles later, so that a greater amount of the filter capacity would be used before it becomes necessary to backwash or shut-down the filtration process.